W

hile India celebrated its 62nd Republic Day on Thursday, the nation’s Ambassador to Indonesia, Biren Nanda, who ends his appointment to Jakarta this year, spoke with The Jakarta Post’s Erwida Maulia on the “huge progress” made in Indian-Indonesian relations, India’s growing interest in ASEAN and his views on rising tensions in the region. Below are excerpts from the interview .

Question: What is the state of bilateral relations between Indonesia and India today, and where is the relationship going?

Answer: If you look at the past decade, we have already had very steady and rapid progress. Last year was great for our relations. President [Susilo Bambang] Yudhoyono’s visit to India as the chief guest on the occasion of our National Day was hugely successful.

We signed 15 agreements and MoUs in diverse areas, [including] energy, science and technology, culture and small and medium enterprises cooperation. We had 18 business deals, MoUs signed up for a value of more than US$15 billion, covering infrastructure, manufacturing and services. It’s symbolic of the closeness of our ties.

We have had huge progress in our bilateral relations. To give you an idea of how we’ve progressed, in 2005 our trade was $4 billion, and in the first nine months of last year our trade was $15 billion. We should have trade about $18 to 19 billion in 2011, which is nearly a five fold increase, making Indonesia one of our most important trading partners in ASEAN.

What about Indian investments?

A lot of Indian investments have come to Indonesia. In the 1970s, we had investment in the textile sector. We have two companies in the steel sector, two auto component companies and two motorcycle manufacturers, Bajaj and DVS.

And now Tata Motors is going to launch its products [in] Jakarta. They’re going to introduce hard manufacturing for cars and drugs in Indonesia.

We have a number of Indian companies in the resources sector, particularly coal mining.

In infrastructure, three Indian companies are making railway lines: two in Sumatra and one in Kalimantan. Indian companies have expressed a keen interest in entering the infrastructure sector in Indonesia.

I would imagine that Indian investment in Indonesia is in the billions of dollars. Almost every month I’m visited by Indian companies that tell me they’re acquiring an Indonesian company or setting up a presence in Indonesia.

Indonesia is attractive for Indian companies because it is next door, it’s a neighbor, it is the largest economy in ASEAN and the economy is doing very well, and also because of the ASEAN Economic Community in 2015, which will allow them to access the whole of ASEAN, if they set up a production base in Indonesia.

Where do Indonesia and India need to boost ties?

There is one area in our bilateral relationship that we have to work on, and that is people-to-people relations.

While our trade has increased nearly five times, the level of tourist traffic — people-to-people exchanges — is rather low. We have about 100,000 Indians coming to Indonesia every year, but only about 30,000 Indonesians going the other way. This is not good enough. We are now working on the tourism sector.

Given the long history of our cultural contact and the living commonality — in language, literature, arts and crafts, performing arts, archaeological heritage, even religion — there should be a lot of interest and comfort for Indonesians to go to India, and for the people of India to come to Indonesia. It’s a lack of awareness, especially in the younger generation. We have to work on connectivity. We have to encourage our airlines to start direct flights so that people find it easy to travel to India and come back.

What about India’s ties with ASEAN?

[ASEAN] is an area that we have historical links with. This is the most economically dynamic region in the world.

This is the only area that is growing while more established and developed parts of the world are not growing as fast or are contracting. It’s only natural that India would seek to expand her trade and investment ties, people-to-people relations [with ASEAN].

This year, we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of our dialog partnership. We are going to have a number of events and ministerial meetings. There will be a commemorative summit in New Delhi in December.

We’re also having a lot of cultural events during this commemorative year. We will have a car rally and a sailing expedition. This is to create an awareness of our relationship with ASEAN in India.

We have a very large number of projects in diverse areas, including health, pharmaceuticals, education, science and technology, space, etc....

We have almost 40 new projects in process with a value of more than $70 billion with ASEAN at the moment.

What about growing tensions in the region over the South China Sea dispute?

We firmly believe that these differences of opinions that we have on various issues should be settled through dialog. You have the Jakarta International Defense Dialogue, which takes place every year, the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, bilateral meetings, ASEAN meetings and ASEAN Plus meetings. Security issues in the region are also discussed at the East Asia Summit.

One of the big changes last year was that Russia and the United States entered the East Asia Summit. From the original five areas, which basically focus on economic issues, now the East Asia Summit has added security issues to the table.

I think the key is to utilize these networks for dialog and to discuss these issues to arrive at some solutions, and try to understand the other person’s point of view.

Indonesia has been playing a very major role in diffusing these regional issues and regional tensions, particularly through its chairmanship in ASEAN.

We hope Indonesia would continue to play this important role as the most influential and the largest ASEAN country.